


Half a Heart Alone

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (ignoring the epilogue), F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco/Hermione, <i>He's still there.  She's not too surprised; she's learned to tell when people come in to drink with a purpose, and he's carrying that in his shoulders, in the way his fingers curl around his near-empty glass.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Half a Heart Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for characters not coping well post-war. (this was a bday gift for Maura)

She's washing dishes when he walks in. _All the gin joints in all the world,_ she thinks, and dries her hands. The door from the kitchen to the bar is propped open, and she leans a hip on the counter and watches him. He hasn't seen her yet, and even when he does he won't recognize her. She's got a pixie cut now, and her hair's auburn. She's wearing a pair of black rim glasses, and a dark red shade of lipstick, and it doesn't take much magic to shift a face—a little fuller, nose a different shape—into something he won't recognize unless he's looking for her.

He's not, of course. That's not even on the table, so there's no sharp flash of worry when she sees him slide a bill across the bar and order a beer from Jim. He still looks the same, even if it's odd to see him dressed in Muggle clothes. Street clothes. Her clothes. Nostalgia brims in her for a moment, but even that disperses quickly enough. 

She rests the dishcloth on her shoulder for a moment, and then turns back to work. She needs to finish up and then get back to work on the floor—she needs the tips if she's going to make rent this month. She pulls the ugly yellow gloves back on her hands and hums beneath her breath as she works. She doesn't glance at him again, but his presence hums in the back of her mind all the same, and when she's done, and the dishes are all lined up in the drying rack, she steps out of the kitchen and into the bar area.

He's still there. She's not too surprised; she's learned to tell when people come in to drink with a purpose, and he's carrying that in his shoulders, in the way his fingers curl around his near-empty glass. Jim's busy at the other end, dealing with a gaggle of young hen partiers, and he nods his head at Draco, silently asking if she'll take over. She nods back.

She grabs a rag and starts wiping down the bar. Her eyes don't flicker hesitantly toward him, but then she's never been unsure about the facts. He's leaning over his glass as if he'll find some answers there, but Hermione's learned that answer, too. There are no answer anywhere, as far as she can tell.

It's been what, four years now since the Battle. Three and a half since she stepped outside the door of the Burrow and started walking. Walked until the pain from the blisters on her feet finally cut through the fog in her mind, and she'd sat down on the side of the road and pulled off her shoes, too numb to cry and far too stubborn to admit she needed help. Her hands are steady again, and maybe that counts for something. The nightmares crop up only now and again, and she's learned to handle them better.

She's self-medicated and when that didn't work she got a job in a bookstore and read through the entire self-help section, sitting on the floor of a flat she shared with five other roommates (only two were on the lease, and she had to climb up the fire escape if the landlord's car was in the driveway when she came home). She dated boys and she dated girls and she wrote essays on the war, brilliant recounts of the Battle, and all the players, and the nights she and Harry slept in the tent and fought against an overwhelming hopelessness that settled, like a drug, in their veins. If she ever goes back (she'll never go back) she could turn it into a book and publish it. It's the sort of thing to leave a legacy with, her very own _Hogwarts: A History._

Of course, she already has a legacy.

“Another?” she asks him. He looks up at her, his eyes a little red, his mouth thin. She waits for him to speak, but he nods, instead, and she tries not to focus on the distinction as she settles a clean glass in her hand and fills it. She's given up distinctions, for the moment. There was a time when the complexity of the world was rewarding in it's overwhelmingness, but she's learned, too, to focus inwards. At least for now.

(If she ever goes back, if she ever sees the others, if she ever has to _explain_ —(no), if she ever goes back and becomes a teacher like maybe she wanted, then she'll have to expand her focus. But that's not something to worry about for today.)

She slides the glass across the bar, and when he takes it his fingers brush hers.

She waits, for a second, for that thrill of worry— _(will he recognize—?)_ , but it doesn't come. He barely looks at her, and her stomach burns a little but she can't name the emotion that ignited it. 

He tips decently, but now that she's closer she can see the frays on the cuffs of his plaid shirt, and the hole on the black tee beneath. She's never known him to have a hair out of place (not true, _not true_ , as the fiendfyre rose—), but there's scruff on his cheeks, and calluses on his fingertips. She thinks—

She takes his empty glass and sets it in the empty dishpan.

She takes his empty glass and sets it in the empty dishpan, and then she flexes her fingers once, twice, three times, four:

She flexes her fingers and tries to still the way they're suddenly shaking, and it isn't fair, she thinks, it isn't—

(She never wanted to go back.)

“Jean?” Jim asks, stepping toward her. She and Jim dated a year back. Sometimes she'd spin (true) stories as they laid together in bed, his arms around her, his lips pressed against her shoulder. Jim knows something happened to her, but he's never asked what. She's pretty sure he thinks it's her family, because she never talks about her family.

( _Gryffindor,_ she thinks, hysterically, and chokes back a laugh.)

Jim's fingers catch her wrists, and she thinks—

She can feel him watching her, his gaze heavy on the side of her face. She curls her lips into a smile, looks up at Jim. _Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together._

“Thought I saw a spider,” she says, pitching amusement in with a dash of self-deprecation. She lifts an eyebrow at him until Jim breaks a smile. “You saw nothing,” she warns lightly.

“Never knew you to be such a scaredy-cat,” Jim says, but he lets go of her wrists. She shoves her hands into her pockets and grins at him.

“It was big enough that you'd have screamed,” she says. Jim laughs and moves back down to other end of the bar, and she turns toward the gaze she's knows is waiting for her.

“Bet I've seen bigger,” Draco says coolly. She meets his gaze levelly.

The burning in her stomach levels off and then eases a little.

“Bet I have, too,” she says.

She pours them both a shot of vodka without asking. She never drinks on the job, which is why she knows Jim'll let her get away with it today. The few perks that always come with being a goody two-shoes, she thinks. They throw back their shots, which is a nice chaser for the too-wry perspective of her life.

“You live around here?” he asks. His eyes are dark, but she lifts a shoulder and lets it fall.

“I'm not in the habit of telling strangers in bars where I live,” she says.

“Even on their birthday?” he asks. His lips pinch as soon as the words escape, and she thinks the vodka must have hit his system a little faster than he was expecting. Trust he'd be a lightweight.

Anyway, she's too busy pulling memory apart and matching it on her internal calendar. Once heard, never forgot she thinks, and then she tries to choke back that thought, too, because forgetting is a gift she wishes she could win or earn or learn instead. But gifts don't work like that. At Christmas she turns from the tree and the lights and the way her roommates hum along to old songs; there is nothing she wants to reminisce. 

Still, she thinks.

“When did you leave?” she asks. It's not what she meant to say, but her fingers won't still and she beats a staccato on the counter and looks past him to the windows, where the sky has gone from grey to a deep blue.

“Not long after you disappeared,” he says. “I—” he starts, and then cuts himself off. She's gladder than she should be about that.

“And?” she presses.

He runs a finger around the lip of the glass. He keeps his eyes on the amber inside. She's not sure what she's asking – where he works, why he left, why he hasn't come back, is anyone looking for her, did anyone miss her, does he have nightmares, has he found anything that helps, has he found any answers, has he patched himself together, has—

(is he going to go back)

“I'm going to America,” he says. He sounds uncertain. Her heart soars for a moment; she thinks of books set in America, of glittering lights and horizons that know no end; she thinks of a place she can wander unchecked, a world to roam over. She curtails her thoughts sharply. She's always checked herself from flying too high.

“Are we too old to still be running away?” she asks.

Her finger slides in the condensation on the wood. 

“It's my birthday,” he says, his voice soft.

(She thinks of birthdays spent alone: one in a park, where she laid out on the grass and watched squirrels and leaned against the trunk of a tree, her clothes rain resistant, her hair tucked up in her hat; one getting drunk with friends she'd met a few nights before, singing loudly and getting thrown out of a bar; one writing feverishly, her fingers cramping, ink splattered on her fingers, trying to ignore the way she'd reach for the ink for a quill she didn't use; one spent with Jim, who kissed her cheek and let her watch television and helped her dye her hair.)

She thinks of America, and distance, and the way worlds live inside of worlds, and the way people live inside of people.

She thinks of Draco. Of the boy he was, and the girl she was.

She pours them both another shot.

“Happy Birthday,” she says. “When do we leave?”

Running, she knows, is just another word for searching.  
 __

_Finis  
_


End file.
